Blow Out
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Movie Reviews of Blow Out
Movie Review: The DePalma film to see
Summary: 4 Stars
Even with its plot contrivances and often amateurish performances (Lithgow and Franz overplay it to the hilt), Blow Out is utterly engrossing from beginning to end. Travolta is good here. Philadelphia works brilliantly as a character in this story about political corruption in the City of Brotherly Love. And, sure, DePalma takes his camera for a joyride or two--that's to be expected.
But the feeling of paranoia DePalma creates is so pervasive, you just might wonder where the bug is in your den. And the most amazing aspect of the film, one never noticed by critics, is that every shot in the film is composed of red, white, and blue elements, furthering the motif of real trouble in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Not to be missed.
Allegedly, the elaborate parade/chase sequence had to be completely reshot after production ended: It simply disappeared. Hmmmm...
Movie Review: A must for any Travolta or De Palma's fans
Summary: 5 Stars
Finally it is out on DVD. While the picture quality is good, it is not much better than the excellent Wide Screen LD that was released some time ago. Anyway both Wide screen and full screen is provided to satisfy both. But this movie is the perfect example to see why Pan & Scan won't work.The movie itself is great, John Travolta is a sound-effect man who was out in the middle of the night to record some sound when he witnessed a car accident and the recording of the accident revealed something that could cause his life. The direction of Brian De Palma is good and the movie is so exciting to watch. 2001 is 20th anniversary of the movie. Too bad MGM didn't bother to release this as a special edition. But for the price it is worth owning.
Movie Review: One of DePalma's best films
Summary: 4 Stars
Brian DePalma has been (sometimes correctly) accused of manufacturing little more than brilliant pastiche (which is another way of damning him with faint praise). I confess to be as guilty as anyone of this practice, finding films like Dressed to Kill slick, fun, but ultimately less works of art than of skillful post-modern artifice.Blow Out is a haunting exception. Yes, it has clear antecedents in Antonioni's Blowup and Coppola's paranoid classic, The Conversation. But it is unfair to judge Blow Out by its similarities to these films. One need only pay minimal attention to realize DePalma has his own goals in mind. No mere retread of the standard paranoid political thriller, Blow Out is a bravura exercise in nuanced, multi-layered story telling.
Low budget movie soundman Jack Terry (John Travolta) is in the right place at the wrong time - while out recording some nature sounds for a B slasher flick (in which DePalma seems to poke fun at some of his own earlier work), he catches the sounds of an auto accident. In an incident reminiscent of Chappaquiddick, a car driven by a presidential candidate suffers a tire blowout and careens off a nearby bridge. The candidate dies, but Terry manages to rescue his "lady friend", a party girl named Sally (Nancy Allen). Key to the story is his recording, which seems to contain a double-bang - perhaps the blowout preceded by a gunshot? Naturally the story leads Terry into a web of intrigue featuring slimy political operatives, corrupt cops, and nefarious CIA henchmen.
Blow Out's visual style has drawn criticism from some quarters as being too flashy. Ridiculous! The camera movements are precise and deliberate; designed to communicate story points with great efficiency. The visual technique draws no more attention to itself than anything directed by Scorsese. Raging Bull (released about the same time) is far more "flashy" and nobody complains about it.
The DVD itself lacks any special features, but the film transfer is vivid and detailed, with good color fidelity (essential, since the art-direction is a major "star"). It is also double-sided, with a pan-scan presentation on one side, and enhanced widescreen on the other. Don't even bother with the pan-scan; DePalma and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's compositions are edge-to-edge, making full use of the Panavision frame.
Blow Out is not perfect. Some of the dialogue is contrived and sophomoric. Assassin Burke's (John Lithgow) golf pants in one scene make him look silly when he should seem sinister. But, on balance, John Travolta's solid performance and Brian DePalma's skilled direction more than make up for such lapses. With Blow Out DePalma reaches deeper than usual - with a disquieting sub-plot about guilt, unrequited love, and the futility of seeking redemption. Its conclusion is the punch line to a bitter, existential joke. Read closely, it's a scathing commentary on the Hollywood film industry itself, and the vampiric way it often feeds on very real, sometimes very sad, lives.
Movie Review: Peeping Tom, Hitchcock, & Blow-Up meet in De Palma's Head
Summary: 5 Stars
After the unfairly bashed & hilariously satirical "Mission to Mars" (a satire almost everyone who saw the film seemed to miss) and the incredible virtuosity of "Snake Eyes" I will never underrate De Palma again as long as I live. The guy's a cinematic genius who hasn't lost his powers, just an understanding audience. And yet his peak years remain between "Phantom of the Paradise" & "Scarface." And the peak of that peak period is "Blow Out," De Palma's most fully realized & poetically resonating elaboration of his favorite theme: the glossed-over & willfully ignored post-Orwellian horrors of modern America & the hypocrisies & power struggles & conspiracies that constantly churn its engine; the immense tragedy of this for its innocent victims & romantic heroes. In "Snake Eyes" you had Cage & Gugino; the updated versions of Travolta & Allen in "Blow Out." "Blow-Out" keeps you fascinated & riveted through its thriller elements while implying numerous things on the way until the last 6 or 7 minutes and then bursts out on multiple levels of metaphor with one of the greatest, most poetic endings in cinematic history which brings everything full-circle from the beginning and ties all the loose ends up in one magnificent fell swoop. The many levels and essences of corruption in American society, the constant rape of the innocent and naive by the cynical and powerful, the exploitation constantly going on represented by the cheap film company Travolta works for using a real scream of a girl about to die to finally get it right, etc., not to mention the ever-relevant post-Chappaquidick-at-the-time, post-Clinton-Lewinsky-Condit-now comments on political corruption, political conspiracies and cover-ups, the Antonioni-Blow-Up-like foray into the nature of reality and experience and cinematic illusion itself, all of this comes together in the final two scenes with a cathartic, understated bang! And, of course, the key to all this is John Travolta's amazing, subtle performance, maybe his best ever, and Nancy Allen's equally effective one as the ultimate poster-girl for youth, vigor and innocence, confused, unwittingly corrupted by the dark side of America, always two steps away from being saved and two steps away from being too far gone. John Lithgow also must be mentioned, since he plays such amazingly realistic villians, so much like a regular guy, almost everyone's suburban neighbor, and yet because of this very fact so evil it's positively creepy! Also, Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue makes a memorable appearance as a low-rent sleaze-bag manipulator whose very weaknesses as an aspiring sleazebag make him harder to hate, making you understand why Allen would trust him! Excellent turn by Frantz. De Palma's films of this period also use an intentional, slightly artifical style of acting, not quite 'over-the-top' but just twisted enough to suggest a level of self-parody. In "Blow Out," Travolta's character is the only one played mostly straight, with everyone else seeming almost surreal, hallucinations of themselves.
The DVD has an perfectly matted, not-pristine-but-relatively-decent-looking-to-my-eyes (although some DVD review places have complained about the color separation, I only noticed a slight swarming of black backgrounds during the night-scenes, and they still gave the transfer a C grade, not an F like the Scarface DVD) wide-screen transfer and the super-cool original trailer but not much more if 'extras' like a commentary are what you're looking for. It also has one of the cheesiest looking Main-Menu screens ever designed, but fortunately this is not reflective of the fair quality of the transfer itself offered in the DVD, just the result of some page-designer's nightmare. Oh yeah, the DVD also has a 'standard' full-screen version, on the other side, in case you're one of those geniuses who like watching your movies with only half the original motion picture on the screen, thinking you're getting more bang for your buck because your entire TV screen is filled! The studios have not forsaken your bizarrely logical preferences!
Movie Review: Overblown...except in the extras
Summary: 3 Stars
Brian DePalma's 1981 homage to "The Conservation" and "Blow-Up" is somewhat of a mixed bag. The opening and first half of the film are very well-handled, suspenseful and controlled, with very good use (as was DePalma's forte') of split screen, tracking shots and other filmic effects. However, the latter stages of the film sink into a few too many cliche's and towards the end what was meant to be suspenseful, almost seems laughable and too drawn out for it's own good. However, the film does hit the right note at the end. John Travolta puts in a very good performance as the heroic soundman and John Lithgow plays an overzealous assassin incredibly well. I realise that Nancy Allen was DePalma's wife, but jeeeezz she's wooden, playing the idiot with the heart of gold routine that became a stereotype in the 1930s.
The DVD of "Blow Out" comes with the original trailer and the film itself has been nicely restored, with the visuals benefitting immensely from the widescreen ratio. Still, I think that the film could have been shorter, sharper and less cliche'd, and as such would advise the casual DePalma fan to go for "Dressed to Kill" which not only has a boatload more extras, but also a very entertaining Michael Caine performance as well.